![[Achaemenides]](achaemenides.jpg)
Throughout our association, Achaemenides remained a largely mysterious figure. Kallazin of appearance, though not I think Gentari, Achaemenides remained silent on the subject of his past, or indeed his present. He was apparently working for Irmoina as a guard when we left Cufen for Delmop, and despite confronting the strange tentacled creature we met on the road, was unable to prevent his employer's death at its hands.
Later it emerged that he had been gathering information on Irmoina and Stelus for some time though not, like Eulac, on behalf of the police authorities, but rather, I suspect, in order to blackmail them. Achaemenides always seemed to know more than was healthy about the seedier side of Delmop - its criminal fraternity and drug scene. I wondered if he himself was not occasionally under the influence of some illegal substance, as sometimes he seemed strangely forgetful and distracted.
Achaemenides, like Ellendar, also took possession of one of the black tetrahedra that we found in Stelus's cultic chambers within the sewers. And, like Ellendar, this resulted in his coming under the influence of the slug queen when we were in Chaukad, and fighting the rest of our party. This almost resulted in his death, as Alaric and Rackah were very keen to finish off those who had turned against them. However, the rest of us intervened and he was saved.
However Achaemenides had apparently not learnt his lesson in acquiring dangerous magic items and took from Chaukad the rat mask that we found there. In the years that followed he apparently found a niche for himself within the Dark Web, Delmop's notorious underworld operation. It is only recently that this has come to light, as a group of people investigating the whereabouts of the Chaukad masks, confronted and killed "The Rat" in his den under one of Delmop's ampitheatres.
